Landsea has published similar papers before; that might be one reason this one gets little attention; It's fairly old news.

The real significance (when taken with Mann's) is that El Ninos tend to suppress tropical storm formation in the tropical Atlantic, whilst tropical storm numbers tend to increase during La Nina years. (El Ninos increase wind shear that helps suppress hurricane formation, to put it simply.)

I would expect to have seen a rise in the actual numbers in periods when La Ninas were more frequent than El Ninos; that wasn't the case during the last century; El Ninos predominated. (I know there has been discussion as to whether warmer SSTs cause more intense tropical storms; I've never thought there would be a simple correlation such as that myself; there's African dust to consider too for example.)

The significance of Mann's paper is that it is yet another piece of evidence supporting the hypothesis that the eastern Pacific entered into a predominantly la Nina state prior to and during the so-called Medieval Warm Period; a period of prolonged, severe droughts across the Americas.

Landsea is looking at whether there has been an actual, or simply a reported, rise in tropical storms over the 20th century, not at whether there has been a rise over the past ten centuries. In its own way Landsea's papers supports the hypothesis that ocean variability conditions were different during the MWP. I don't see these two papers contradicting each other.

I've started writing up an account (from published research) of both the American Medieval droughts and tropical ocean variability conditions at the time on a site here. It's a work in progress (and I have more to write up when I get time) but the first half of this page should give an overview.http://sites.google.com/site/medievalwarmperiod/

If anything, both Mann's and Landsea's papers could be seen as supporting the hypothesis that ocean variability conditions were not the same during the 20th century as during the MWP. Therefore, we are not in a repeat of the conditions that caused the warming of the MWP. I'm not sure is that is news, I've never thought we were.

1. Are the release dates the same? You'd have to normalize for diffusion time, and perhaps also visibility of the journal, and breadth of press release distribution?2. Your search on Mann includes all kinds of spurious stuff. "Juice Rallies on Crop-Size Fears; Traders Put on Storm Watch" ?3. Some outlets spin Mann the other way. "Hurricanes more common in the Middle Ages" (USA Today)

Roger, Do you realise that there's also a film director called "Michael Mann"? I just scrolled down the list of results from your Google news search criteria and found lots of references to the new Johnny Depp movie, 'Public Enemies' - directed by Michael Mann!Run the Google seach as "Michael Mann" +hurricanes and I only got 27 returns.

The Blog List in my blog (see the sidebar on the right) includes a wide assortment of very credible skeptic sites -- for those who prefer not to be dragged around by the nose by self-described propagandists posing as “journalists”.

Why restrict it to just those days, when the NOAA release came out on the 11th? If I set the range from the 11th to the 12th (the NOAA report was out on the 11th), I get the 1,392 result. Biased? You decide.

Regardless, you are missing the broader point, that the vast majority of the search results in both cases don't cover studies in question, rendering your statement:

"1,264 = the number of news stories covering Michael Mann and colleagues' new paper claiming that Atlantic hurricanes are at a 1,00o-year high."

grossly inaccurate and misleading.

Speaking of media bias, remember the media storm over the following GISS correction, which had a negligible impact on global trends?

http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/2007/Fig4_correction.gif

However, how many media reports covered upward corrections to the satellite record (particularly UAH) with actual serious implications for the global trend and climate science? There have been several significant ones over the last decade (i.e. diurnal drift).

Like New York, I still disagree with your search technique, and 2nd NewYork's point in 14.

If you news.google hurricane "michael mann" the first hit is a group of 1394 articles, many of which are totally irrelevant. If you substitute "chris landsea" you get the same 1394 articles. Clearly the search triggers some kind of topic grouping on google, that may or may not involve the author. If you restrict the dates, you still get the same group for mann but not for landsea, but I'm not sure what that actually means. In any case, your searches in 13 still aren't conceptually the same.

I think you'd have to go source by source and see who has covered each paper (and then correct for base rate visibility) to get a solid claim of bias.

In 3 you argue that the USA Today slant (more medieval hurricanes) is contrary to Mann's statements, but Mann says things like "...our key conclusion (that levels of activity during the Medieval era might have equaled or even exceed current levels of activity) is actually strengthened, not weakened."* Maybe that's not all Mann says, but it would seem that USA Today got it right. Ironically, they now have an article titled, "Study: Hurricanes more frequent than in 1,000 years"* http://holocene.meteo.psu.edu/~mann/Nature09/responses.htm

Here are some of the highly-relevant (NOT!) links from your restricted Mann search:

Atlantic may soon see first named storm - NHC Reuters India - ‎Aug 14, 2009‎ NEW YORK, Aug 14 (Reuters) - The Atlantic Ocean could see its first named storm of the hurricane season in a day or two as a low pressure system off the ...

Atlantic Weather System May Become Hurricane, Planalytics Says Bloomberg - Brian K. Sullivan - ‎Aug 13, 2009‎ Aug. 13 (Bloomberg) -- A system of thunderstorms in the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Africa may develop . . .

Guillermo could strengthen to hurricane in Pacific The Associated Press - ‎Aug 13, 2009‎ MIAMI — Forecasters say they're expecting Tropical Storm Guillermo to strengthen to a hurricane as it moves farther out to sea in the Pacific. ...

Apparently there are 933 more just like this. Ain't point and click so much fun? You don't even have to use your brain!

Roger: If you click "sort by date with duplicates included" and you'll reduce those thousands of results to 16 results. I get 5 results for a similar search for stories between August 12 and August 15 on: hurricane noaa landsea.

A 3-fold difference can, I think it's fair to say, be explained by the differing prominence of Nature and the Journal of Climate.

Looks like "27 to 3" isn't right either, but it's a step in the right direction. More accurate is not accurate, however. Perhaps in a few weeks, we'll have the correct figures, long after the political blogs have eagerly regurgitated "1,264 to 1" to the knee-jerk crowd.